Media History Digital Library - website goes online

[David Pierce]

I am pleased to announce the launch of the Media History Digital Library's new website. On the site you will find over 200,000 digitized pages of motion picture and broadcasting industry trade papers, fan magazines and year books, including Moving Picture World (1912-1918), Film Daily (1918-1936), Photoplay (1917-1940), Radio Broadcast (1922-1930), and much more. All of the materials are in the public domain and available for reading online, creative reuse and download.

http://mediahistoryproject.org/" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

The site blog uncovers materials from the thousands of pages in the collection, including reviews, gossip and technical information. We hope you will use the Library, recommend it to others, and let us know how we can improve the experience. Also, use the forum to let us know what media journals will be most useful to your own work to have in digitized, searchable form.

We're currently digitizing more materials and developing an Advanced Search function that will allow you to perform customizable searches across multiple publications, volumes, and years. In the meantime, you can perform searches within individual volumes (which span anywhere from 3 months to 2 years, depending on the publication).

We still have a long way to go in making the public domain accessible and building digital resources that will enable archivists and scholars to ask new questions and write new histories. But, I hope you will agree, this is a good step forward!

The project is supported by collectors and libraries who loan their materials for scanning, and donors who contribute funds to cover costs. Information on how you can help is on our sponsorship page. Our sincere thanks go to the owners, donors, and Rick Prelinger, who has allowed us to incorporate scanned material from his collection into our project. Other project principals are Eric Hoyt, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Southern California, and Wendy Hagenmaier, an archivist at the University of Texas Information School.

David Pierce
founder and director, Media History Digital Library

[Frederica]

I am pleased to announce the launch of the Media History Digital Library's new website. On the site you will find over 200,000 digitized pages of motion picture and broadcasting industry trade papers, fan magazines and year books, including Moving Picture World (1912-1918), Film Daily (1918-1936), Photoplay (1917-1940), Radio Broadcast (1922-1930), and much more. All of the materials are in the public domain and available for reading online, creative reuse and download.

http://mediahistoryproject.org/" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

The site blog uncovers materials from the thousands of pages in the collection, including reviews, gossip and technical information. We hope you will use the Library, recommend it to others, and let us know how we can improve the experience. Also, use the forum to let us know what media journals will be most useful to your own work to have in digitized, searchable form.

We're currently digitizing more materials and developing an Advanced Search function that will allow you to perform customizable searches across multiple publications, volumes, and years. In the meantime, you can perform searches within individual volumes (which span anywhere from 3 months to 2 years, depending on the publication).

We still have a long way to go in making the public domain accessible and building digital resources that will enable archivists and scholars to ask new questions and write new histories. But, I hope you will agree, this is a good step forward!

The project is supported by collectors and libraries who loan their materials for scanning, and donors who contribute funds to cover costs. Information on how you can help is on our sponsorship page. Our sincere thanks go to the owners, donors, and Rick Prelinger, who has allowed us to incorporate scanned material from his collection into our project. Other project principals are Eric Hoyt, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Southern California, and Wendy Hagenmaier, an archivist at the University of Texas Information School.

David Pierce
founder and director, Media History Digital Library

This really is an embarrassment of riches. Thank you all so much.

[rudyfan]

David, virtual HUGs and much jumping for joy. Thank you just does not convey the gratitude I feel for all your hard work. As Joan said, this is riches indeedy!

Whopee!

[Harlett O'Dowd]

David, virtual HUGs and much jumping for joy. Thank you just does not convey the gratitude I feel for all your hard work. As Joan said, this is riches indeedy!

Whopee!

Oh crap! More stuff to look through ....

I mean, thank thank thank you so much. Yeah! What Fred & Donna said

[Brooksie]

David, prepare to appear in the `With thanks to ...' section of many, many, MANY film biographies in the years to come.

[Rollo Treadway]

[westegg]

You deserve some sort of Oscar for this.

[ymmv]

What an incredible effort! I will spend many, many hours browsing the collection.

[rudyfan]

I use their website more times than I can count. Domitor is spearheading a fundraising effort to raise $5,000 by January 1, 2012 to enable 50,000 pages to be digitized/added. That's a modest goal that will help so much.

I've posted about it on my blog (and paypaled a little scratch, too) http://strictly-vintage-hollywood.blogs ... lease.html

All the links and relevant info is there for the reading.

I can't stress enough how much I use this material, how grateful I am that it's out there with more to come. The fund raising goal is a modest one and SO worth it. If you've ever looked a single thing up on anything digitized so far, you owe them at least $1 a pop!